Nicolas Van de Sijpe

What is the endgame in this toxic immigration debate: is it friends and neighbours thrown out of the country? | Jonthan Liew The notion of remigration was abstract, but the right is dragging it towards respectability. If the goal is homogeneous whiteness, they should say it, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Liew

I don't say this often, but if you follow me, I'm asking you to read this:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Startling conclusion here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dogs-4
#smbc

New in the JPE: RCT evidence that exercise (via a free gym card) improves academic performance www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... #EconSky

"These results suggest that should a referendum be held, making the public aware of the empirical analysis could markedly influence the outcome" Laugh-cries in Brexit 😂

The power of empirical evidence: assessing changes in public opinion on constitutional emergency provisions - Public Choice The Japanese government is attempting to put emergency clauses in the Constitution. Although the overwhelming majority of legal scholars and practitioners vehemently oppose the initiative, public opin...

Showing people in Japan empirical evidence on the negative effects of emergency clauses in the Constitution changes their opinion quite markedly against adding emergency clauses. link.springer.com/article/10.1... #econsky

Not even 9am. So far on Radio 6, the news bulletins have featured a mother saying her daughters aren't safe because of asylum seekers, a Tory politician lambasting Labour for crossing numbers & Badenoch encouraging councils to lodge legal challenges against hotels. An endless stream of hateful bile.

Ultimate dad joke last week. We were in a safari/zoo type of place and it was difficult to see the bears, as they were sleeping far away. Without missing a beat I said you could barely (get it) see them. I don't care, it made my son smile :).

Been listening to the same three Nick Cave albums for weeks now so think that's Spotify wrapped sorted...

"How the Institute for Replication is making social science more robust and reliable:" www.openphilanthropy.org/research/how...

4-panel SMBC comic update where a red-haired man prays to God with a question about goodness. God replies dismissively, saying it was a token prediction and also failing to spell "resurrection" correctly.

Actually WWII was a hallucination that just got way out of control.

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/good-7
PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/c/ZachWeiner...
STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

4-panel comic. (1) [Person 1 with ponytail flanked by person with short hair and another person speaking into microphone at podium] PERSON 1: In the early 2010s, researchers found that many major scientific results couldn’t be reproduced. (2) PERSON 1: Over a decade into the replication crisis, we wanted to see if today’s studies have become more robust. (3) PERSON 1: Unfortunately, our replication analysis has found exactly the same problems that those 2010s researchers did. (4) [newspaper with image of speakers from previous panels] Headline: Replication Crisis Solved

Replication Crisis

xkcd.com/3117/

Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can't get anything done – and how to fix it

Listening to a 3h+ podcast on the dysfunction in Britain's government probably doesn't sound that appealing but this interview with Ian Dunt is really engaging and very interesting. My beliefs keep shifting in the direction that Britain is royally screwed though. 80000hours.org/podcast/epis...

when i was a young boy (sorry MCR pilled) law students at melb uni would tear out important pages in library books for high stakes assignments to hinder other students.

now as an academic ive seen people obviously insert needless obstacles into their replication files. it's even more sad.

This paper uses the biographies of historical figures to estimate historical GDP per capita of countries and regions: econpapers.repec.org/paper/arxpap... #econsky

Does Less Education Harm Health? Evidence From a Natural Experiment in a Developing Country We investigate the health outcome effects of a reduction in years of schooling in Egypt in 1988, a policy change that moves in the opposite direction in relation to the extant literature. We exploit ...

This paper looks at a policy change in Egypt that decreased completed years of schooling, finding no adverse effects on health or labour market outcomes from the reduction in education: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #EconSky

If a country has a series of consecutive failing prime ministers, it's perhaps time to look beyond the individual qualities of each of them to find the root cause.

State antiquity and economic progress: cause or consequence? - Public Choice Legacy of statehood is seen as a positive influence on economic growth and development. The state antiquity literature argues that the more experience a country has with state institutions, the more b...

"While not discounting the advantages that a well-functioning state can provide for economic progress, we draw attention to an alternate mechanism: the presence of private institutions and practices that may contribute to both state formation and ec. dev." link.springer.com/article/10.1... #econsky

The Impact of Trade Liberalization in the Presence of Political Distortions (July 2025) - Political distortions are prevalent in many developing countries, implying substantial productivity losses. This paper investigates the impact of trade liberalization on political distor...

"reduced tariffs on input goods sign. decrease the distortionary effect of political connections, as trade reduces firms' dependence on politicians for sourcing inputs. [...] new margin for gains from trade through reduced politically driven misallocation" www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=... #econsky

🧵1/4

🚨 We have finalized our DID textbook!
You’ve run out of excuses for sketchy pre-trends and mysterious TWFE coefficients.

📘 Credible Answers to Hard Questions: Differences-in-Differences for Natural Experiments
By Chaisemartin & D’Haultfœuille.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Can We Trust Social Science Yet?—Asterisk Everyone likes the idea of evidence-based policy, but it’s hard to realize it when our most reputable social science journals are still publishing poor quality research.

I'm late to this excellent piece by @ryancbriggs.net on the extent to which we can trust results from social science research: asteriskmag.com/issues/10/ca... #econsky

The (Un)Importance of Inheritance Abstract. Transfers from parents—either in the form of gifts or inheritances—have received much attention as a source of inequality. This paper uses admini

Gifts and inheritances are highly unequal but don't seem that important a source of income flows (except if you have very wealthy parents): academic.oup.com/jeea/article... #econsky

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

From the Bundesliga: "...evidence of systematically higher bet volume for two referees relative to matches officiated by all other referees, indirect evidence that corruption, in the form of match fixing, occurred." 😮 journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... #econsky

"I estimate a panel FEs model and show that the number of slaving voyages is pos. associated with European city growth from 1600 to 1850 ... for the UK, this effect is distinct from that of general overseas trade, which also increased during this period." nowpublishers.com/article/Deta... #econsky

I am once again pitching my romantic comedy:

- two academics start dating
- discover they are each other's terrible reviewer
- hijinks ensue

Working title: Love is Double-Blind

1. BREAKING via the Financial Times

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has put his cabinet on alert for a possible US attack on Iran, just 24 hours after insisting Donald Trump had given no indication he was about to “get involved in this conflict”.

YouTube video by Sufjan Stevens - Topic Casimir Pulaski Day

Destroys me every single time www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfEk...

UK Home Office tells parents their children should return to Brazil alone While Ana Luiza Cabral Gouveia and Hugo Barbosa can remain, letter says sons, 11 and eight, must go back to Brazil

The UK Home Office, always capable of an even more absurd decision than the previous one

Image shows an owl with a hobby horse - looks like a witch on a broomstick

I have a new hero.
This owl stole a child's hobby horse and flies around with it!